Bernardo Kastrup’s CERBERUS 2100, an academic single-board laptop that places a MOS Expertise 5602 and a Zilog Z80 on a single board alongside an AVR and a number of complicated programmable logic units (CPLDs), is now available for purchase — because of a partnership with with Bulgarian open {hardware} specialist Olimex.
“CERBERUS 2100 is an open supply {hardware} and software program instructional multi-processor eight-bit laptop, that includes each Z80 and 6502 CPUs, plus an AVR processor as I/O [Input/Output] controller,” Olimex founder Tsevetan Usunov writes of the machine. “Constructed with CPLDs, CERBERUS 2100 is totally programmable even with respect to its {hardware}, on the degree of particular person gates and flip-flops.”
The CERBERUS 2100, a retro-style instructional laptop with a break up character, is now available for purchase. (📷: Olimex)
The design was first unveiled by Bernardo Kastrup late final 12 months, following dissatisfaction with how computing is historically taught. “Yr after 12 months I used to be taught data concept, digital sign processing, management concept and whatnot, however not how a whole laptop is put collectively from scratch,” Kastrup wrote on the time. “Apparently, that wasn’t thought of necessary, as in our skilled lives we have been anticipated to work solely on, and with, high-level components — not the entire, and never from scratch.”
The CERBERUS 2100 is Kastrup’s reply, and the machine he wished he’d had again then: providing the power to experiment with each the MOS Expertise 6502 and Zilog Z80 processors, competing powerhouses of Nineteen Eighties house computing, together with dripping proper down into how the {hardware} works to virtually the transistor degree. “Furthermore,” Kastrup provides, “it permits for experimentation at each firmware and {hardware} ranges, because the system is constructed round three in-system programmable CPLDs [Complex Programmable Logic Devices] and an AVR I/O [Input/Output] controller.”
Kastrup launched the machine’s design and supply code on GitHub beneath the permissive MIT license, and promised a manufacturing run of assembled boards to observe — and has partnered with Olimex on that very factor. “The preliminary batch of CERBERUS 2100 [boards] is assembled, examined, and works as anticipated,” Usunov says, with orders open now for quick delivery.
The CERBERUS 2100 might be ordered on the Olimex internet store at €219, whereas the design stays accessible beneath the MIT license on the mission’s GitHub repository for many who would reasonably construct their very own.
